led invasion of Iraq lacked legitimacy under international law, an independent commission probing Dutch political support for the still controversial action said Tuesday. “There was insufficient legitimacy” for the invasion for which the Netherlands gave political but no military backing, commission chairman Willibrord Davids told journalists in The Hague. The commission's report said the wording of UN Resolution 1441 “cannot reasonably be interpreted (as the Dutch government did) as authorizing individual member states to use military force to compel Iraq to comply with the Security Council's resolutions.” The resolution, passed in 2002, had offered Iraq “a final opportunity to comply with its disarmament obligations”. The Dutch commission, which started its work in March last year, was set up by the government following pressure from opposition politicians and the public for a probe of claims that crucial data had been withheld from Dutch decision-makers who opted to support the US-led action. The Netherlands had sent about 1,100 troops to Iraq in July 2003 to take part in a post-invasion, UN-mandated Iraqi stabilization force. The probe found that Dutch policy on the issue had been defined by the Foreign Ministry under then minister Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, who later became NATO secretary-general. “The Prime Minister (Jan Peter Balkenende, still premier today) took little or no lead in debates on the Iraq question; he left the matter of Iraq entirely to the minister of foreign affairs,” the report said. Meanwhile, British Prime Minister Tony Blair sought a diplomatic solution to fears over Iraq's weapons program until just before the invasion, his former communications chief said in London Tuesday. Appearing before a public inquiry into the Iraq war, Alastair Campbell said there never was a “precipitate rush to war” despite the close ties between Blair and US President George W. Bush. “You seem to be wanting me to say that Tony Blair signed up to say regardless of the facts, regardless of WMD (weapons of mass destruction), we are just going to get rid of the guy (Saddam). It was not like that,” Campbell told the inquiry.
